We give stuff meaning every week.

[April 16th, 2008]

• This week’s “Keep Portland Weird” frontrunner is mayoral candidate Kyle Burris, who was arrested April 12 for allegedly threatening to bomb Portland’s IKEA. Employees at the Swedish furniture giant called 911 at 6:18 pm last Saturday to report a customer had left a note on a table containing a bomb threat. Portland police arrived and charged Burris, 21, with disorderly conduct. Burris, an unemployed Portland Community College student from Northeast Portland, was booked into Multnomah County Detention Center and released. He declined comment to Murmurs beyond saying he’s not dropping his self-described “hyperbolic” run, which includes calls for greater police accountability and a proposal to turn the Pearl District into a detainment camp for hipsters.

• One group is keeping conspicuously quiet in the race to fill Lonnie Roberts’ seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. The Gresham Police Officers’ Association is not making an endorsement in the east county race where their boss, Chief Carla Piluso , is one of four candidates. After the union’s seven-member executive board voted this month to endorse candidate Diane McKeel, the final decision was delayed to let all members vote. The result? A tie—23 apiece for McKeel and Piluso, while nine voted to make no endorsement. “I am disappointed,” Piluso says. “As a boss, I have to work very hard to make the right decisions. Sometimes that is not popular. That just kind of goes with the territory .”

• Mayor Tom Potter’s new budget proposal mind-melds with the man he wants to succeed him, Sho Dozono. Potter’s proposal, released April 15, asks, “How do we balance the need for sidewalks in Cully with a streetcar for east Portland?” That echoes Dozono’s stump speeches stressing “core services,” though Potter includes “human infrastructure” in that definition (which explains the $250,000 budgeted for VisionPDX). Potter’s budget would spend all but $11,000 of the available $22.2 million in one-time funds. And, like Dozono, Potter’s budget raises the establishment of a “rainy day” fund—but not until the fall. Must be easier to say no on your way out the door.

• State Sen. Kurt Schrader’s candidacy in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District is leading to speculation about the Canby Democrat’s replacement in one of the Capitol’s most powerful seats: joint chairman of the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee. Sens. Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose) and Margaret Carter (D-Portland), both senior committee members, are said to be in the running. Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem), who will choose the new chair if Schrader gets elected, is staying mum. But Courtney did initially sign up to co-host a $1,250-a-lobbyist April 15 fundraiser at the Blazers’ final home game—at which Carter was scheduled to sing the national anthem. (Courtney nixed the fundraiser after invites went out, because of appearance concerns).

• The International Longshore and Warehouse Union recently went beyond its normal rank-and-file domestic concerns by announcing a shutdown of all West Coast ports, including Portland and Vancouver, on May Day to protest the Iraq war. The 25,000-member union intended to carry out the San Diego-to-Seattle work stoppage by requesting rare day-shift stop-work union meetings that members must attend. Peace advocates, however, had their industrial-size hopes crushed when the ILWU agreed last week not to hold those meetings after the Pacific Maritime Association denied them. “But May 1 is a few weeks off,” says Bruce Holte, an official with the 400-member Portland ILWU 8. “Things may change by then.”